


The Opening Act of Spring

by dimtraces



Series: Runaways 'verse [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Past Child Abuse, Sith Training, identity crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 05:46:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12226962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimtraces/pseuds/dimtraces
Summary: Maul’s teacher has always been violence, and it’s never done him any harm. He should have no qualms about treating his apprentice the same way.





	The Opening Act of Spring

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: The summary says it all, really. Past physical child abuse, and Maul's confused attempt to recreate that abuse because it's the only kind of relationship he knows. This isn't a very healthy relationship, although it's slowly changing during the course of the series. Also, prejudice against different cultures/a culture Maul's been taught is 'uncivilised'.

“What are you writing about, brother?”

“Mission dossier,” Maul replies. Not that their target deserves it, frankly. Ms Chykynn is a businesswoman from Corellia who sought fortune in an entanglement with the Banking Clan, and also a far-removed and minor former beneficiary and ally of Maul’s old Master. Somehow, she managed to bankrupt a rival family, possibly as a side effect of one of Lord Sidious’ myriad schemes, driving the parents to ruin and their daughter to suicide. Two days ago, the daughter’s widow set an astronomical bounty on the businesswoman’s head—detached only—but this information is unlikely to have filtered through to the target yet. She won’t even have hired security. Despite her tangled ties to Lord Sidious, she should be easy prey.

Maul had set their course for Corellia immediately, and they’ve been in hyperspace for two days now. They’ll drop out in eight hours to change lanes. They’ve slept and consumed their morning protein bars, they’ve meditated and sparred, and when there was nothing of any importance left to do, Maul had decided to begin preparing an in-depth dossier. He hasn’t done so in two years now, and he wants to keep his researching skills sharp.

It’s good that Savage’s brought Maul’s attention to what he’s doing, though. Chykynn is plainly ill-protected and weak. He has already read about Corellia, and even her city. This is superfluous busy-work.

Maul stretches his shoulders, and with the press of a button he saves his dossier attempt on the datapad he’s balancing on his knees, and then he closes the file. In its stead, he calls up the blueprints and notes for the _DRK-1 Dark Eye_ redesign that he found in an office on Castell. Much more stimulating.

“What did you write?” Savage asks, not five minutes later. Currently, he’s sitting cross-legged on his bed, his posture almost a mirror of Maul’s. Almost. He doesn’t have the discipline, even now, to force his feet onto his knees. Also, silent work and rest does not become him. He’s fidgeting periodically. He is much too interested in Maul’s activities.

“Three colon null-seven colon two-five dash dash esk krill usk vev dash leth underscore one,” Maul says.

His apprentice’s face remains blank.

“The file name. Look it up yourself. There is a box of datapads by the door—” a box that hadn’t been there when Savage first abducted him; shockingly there hadn’t even been a single datapad on the _Sheathipede_ then— “and all the _Versafunction Eight-Eight_ s are patched into the ship’s comm system, take one of those.”

“It is quicker if you just tell me.”

“Not for me,” Maul replies, and then, with over-exaggerated care, he holds up his datapad so that it blocks out the center of his field of vision. No more annoying brother. Methodically, he skips through the redesign notes: _pressure sensors, photo-sensors, auditory sensors, a concept for olfactory sensors_ —a typically useless v2 idea _—balancing software…_ There _._ The antennas of the current _DRK-1_ have an inconvenient tendency to break off at sub-zero temperatures, and Maul is curious how Sienar are planning to address the issue.

He can’t quite concentrate on the diagrams, though.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watches Savage instead. Maul’s brother untangles his legs and then flops down on his bed, evidently bored of fidgeting. Five seconds later, he rolls over, braces himself on his arms and one knee—the bed is too short—and starts doing lazy push-ups. The bed creaks. Despite Maul’s orders and his obvious restlessness and the fact that he _asked for_ the information, the apprentice never even _considered_ getting up and fetching a datapad.

This petty obstreperousness shall not be tolerated.

“Savage, read the dossier,” Maul says.

Another push-up, as Savage pretends not to have heard him.

“Apprentice.”

Creak, creak, creak.

“By now, you would have finished your reading, if you’d retrieved the datapad.”

“By now, you would have finished telling me about whatever it is you wrote,” Savage replies mulishly. “It would have been much more efficient.”

True. Irrelevant.

“I am the Master,” Maul says, because it must be said occasionally. He’s almost certain that Savage has forgotten that fact again, and more than a little worried that he himself might have, too. “You, Savage, are the apprentice. I have been _lenient_ —” He doesn’t want to, can’t, imagine Lord Sidious’ retribution, should Maul ever have wasted his time like this. It would have involved force lightning, possibly, or skinning, if… if not worse. Master might have just left, might have simply discarded him for his lack of respect. Maul shudders. “I have been incredibly lenient, but when I tell you to read the mission dossier, I _expect_ you to _obey_. With haste and diligence and eagerness. Without question. Being a Sith is a privilege. You are training to become the most powerful being in the galaxy, apprentice, and when your Master gives you an order, you _will obey_.”

Lord Sidious— _his_ former _Master_ , Maul thinks bitterly, _it wasn’t because of his nonexistent disobedience but nevertheless he was discarded_ —he would have laughed at this pitiful attempt at discipline. The obviously unfit and shy approach to training his apprentice.

 _(Maul had suspected, in small moments he never managed to eradicate entirely from his days, that He viewed his as little more than an attack dog, an assassin and errand-boy but not a successor,_ and here is the proof that He was right _. He discarded Maul, didn’t need him for the Naboo mission or the grand millennial plan after all, and he was right.)_

Maul is no Master. This is not training, this is…

This is a lazy, relaxed day.

This is _wrong._

Some threat in Maul’s posture— _he would be unduly flattering Savage’s mental capacity or commitment if he attributed it to the words—_ something that Savage can see in him now makes him stand up, quickly, and walk over to the datapad box.

 _DRK-1_ schematics completely forgotten and trying to quench the anger at his own failure, Maul watches his unwieldy apprentice pick up the uppermost pad. It’s an _Eight-Eight_ —pure luck, he’ll realize later—held together by spacer’s tape and chance ever since an unfortunate incident with a hilt prototype.

Savage shuffles back to his bed and then, with his back buckled and avid concentration, he stares down at the pad, but he’s pressing too many buttons. He’s pressing them seemingly at random. His left leg is beating against the blanket below it, thoughtlessly, restlessly.

“Apprentice, read the first sentence out loud.”

More fidgeting.

“You can’t read,” Maul says.

“I—”

“You can’t read. You should have alerted me, apprentice.” First the utter naïveté with money and the superfluous religious offerings and the propensity towards making unpalatable raw food, and now this. Maul will _not fail_ , and he will not tolerate an uncivilised apprentice. “You should have told me that you can’t read. You used voice commands and holomaps to steer the ship, to hide your deficiencies from me, didn’t you, but we,” Maul snarls, feeling his patience fray, “are _Sith_. We are not _barbarous outer rim yokels_.” Or shall soon cease to be ones, at least, in Savage’s case. “We may be zabraks, but that will not limit us. There are certain standards I expect you to abide by, apprentice, and this is one of them. Everything important has been written down, and a true Sith shall not remain ignorant. You will become literate. You will start _now_.”

Savage is still sitting on the bed, clutching the datapad. He’s looking at Maul, eyes wide, but apart from that, his hurt—hovering in the aura around them, tingling at the borders of Maul’s mind—is hidden well in his posture. He’s learned something from Maul’s customary disapproving frown at emotional displays, at least. From the training sessions that are always harsher if he cries out at an injury. He _can_ be taught.

_(The reason had been minor, and that was the worst of it. Loneliness, maybe, since his nanny droid had just been decommissioned, or a broken finger or mockery, he couldn’t even remember why he’d started crying in the first place. He couldn’t remember anything through the pain. There was only one fact left in the world: Maul had started crying and his Master had seen, and the punishment wouldn’t stop until the tears did. Knowing this did not make stopping easier. It was a very long day.)_

“Kneel down on the floor.”

The apprentice obeys quickly.

“Switch on your datapad. Search _Sheathipede_ ’s database for the _Little Aurebesh_.” Maul doesn’t know why he still remembers that title or that it was apparently often used as a test datafile and therefore might be accessible. He shouldn’t remember. It was so long ago, and he hadn’t even enjoyed Dirk forcing him to read it over and over and over because it was the only children’s book installed on his memory chips.

Savage is slower this time, pressing a button and then looking up at Maul and then pressing it again, and…

Alright, Maul can see the issue now. “Give it to me.”

The holobook isn’t there, only then he remembers to use reg expressions and change the directory and— _Puddle Aurek-Besh by Kel-Shuuura_. That’s it. _Sheathipede_ is obviously ancient and yet, she has never been data-scrubbed and her memory banks still contain test files. The passphrases are probably still factory-set. An amateur oversight on Maul’s part, after the complete mechanical overhaul—he should take care of that security nightmare—but nevertheless serendipitous.

Lord Sidious never taught Maul how to read, that was Dirk the trusty rewired (or not) spy droid, and he adopts the methods he remembers the machine had used. It’s probably better this way. It’s easier to look at datapads when you’re not being thrown across the floor. _(His Master laughs at his pitiful justification. Maul is unfit to train an apprentice.)_

Kneeling next to Savage, he gives back the datapad and points at the scrawly illustration on the screen, the heads of two akk dogs meeting snout-first with thick red lines around their mouths forming the general shape of the letter aurek. “Look at those creatures. What do you see? What are they?”

“Maul, I am… forgive me.”

“Those are _akk_ dogs.” Maul stretches out the sound. A necessary clue, perhaps, since his brother’s probably never even been to their wretched native planet. He stretches out the sound, and the seconds until he’ll have to… “That is the principle behind this book: there will be a well-known creature, and its visible body will be in the shape of the first letter of its name. If you know the animal’s name, you can deduce the letter. If you know the order of the letters, you can gain clues regarding its species. Two _akk_ dogs. From _Anoat_. In the shape of an…”

Savage hums, low and anxious.

“Aurek,” Maul snaps. “See those slanting semi-circles. Aurek. You will try again and answer me promptly, apprentice.”

He is no droid and there is no electric prod, and Maul has never learnt Sith lightning, so he’ll conduct the lesson with what he has. _His apprentice is not obeying fast enough, is not taking this seriously._ With the flick of his wrist he calls his lightsaber close, and he tries not to feel cold. He knows what’s coming—whatever being will appear, Savage won’t know it. Savage will fail his order. He will be punished. This is the way lessons work: the desire to obey your Master, a harsh task, and the pain, the wish for survival, driving you to succeed. Savage will fail, at first, and he will suffer. It’s almost unfair.

It’s inevitable. Maul is Master, Savage his apprentice. Their roles were cut into stone and whispered and handed down long before either of them was born. Savage has—more or less voluntarily, if not intentionally—entrusted Maul with the sacred responsibility of teaching the ways of the Sith, of shaping him into the most powerful version of himself. He does not deserve Maul’s clammy hands; he deserves resolution. Help. He deserves to be taught. _(Master looks down and laughs and laughs.)_

With a deep breath and the press of a button, the next picture appears.

“Bruth!” Savage exclaims.

Something unwraps from around Maul’s hearts. He’s too happy to correct his brother for the fact that he should have recognized letter, not species. “Very good, apprentice. Now, the next one.”

Their luck runs out.

“Veeka-bird?” Savage guesses.

Maul’s fumbling hand only finds the lightsaber's ignition button on the third try, but it does. In the space between them, the blade burns red.

“Palm-bird? No, please, brother… Give me more time. The Great Blind One? Moon-driver? No, just _wait_. Maul, you don’t have to do this, you don’t—Maul, no, wait, please…” Savage begs, but there is nowhere for him to go once he’s scrambled backwards against his bed. Nothing but Maul and Savage, Master and apprentice, and the ship and the saberstaff and the inevitable stream of wrong answers. There is nothing either of them can do to end this.

“The correct answer is _cresh_ ,” Maul says, and it tastes stale and empty inside his mouth.

Slowly, carefully, he brings the blade down.

_(“Your timing has improved,” the droid said, and still it gave Maul a harsh shock that he couldn’t yet dodge. Not a disabling shock, although the exertion alone was enough to make him want to lie down for days. He stood up again and launched himself against the wall and backflipped. Another improvement. Another shock.)_

The blade stops, still more than a decimeter above Savage’s arm.

“That’s good, Maul,” Savage says. There’s a tremor in his voice, and his eyes are fixed on the weapon that should, by now, have burned him. He’s very still. “That’s good. You don’t want to do this.”

And Maul doesn’t. He should, _Master would_ , but—the ‘saber is so heavy in his hand.

“Let’s just… try this again, with the next letter? Can you do that?” Savage asks. “I promise I will get it right next time, brother.”

Maul can’t think of a better option—the blade will not move—and so he acquiesces.

Despite his promise, Savage doesn’t manage to name the next letter or animal, either, even though he talks for minutes and runs through a bewildering array of strange animal names, animals that Maul has never heard of, as if he could stop the lightsaber by inventing creatures, only interrupting the fantastical names to occasionally say Maul’s name.

It’s… whatever it is that Savage’s doing to defend himself, it’s working. The lightsaber is wavering too badly, now, and Maul switches the blade off. He is supposed to punish his apprentice, not accidentally decapitate him.

“That’s good, Maul,” Savage says, interrupting his litany for a moment to run his fingers across the scars on Maul’s hand, the hand that still clutches the saberstaff, and pulling it down towards the floor. Then he launches back into it, growing more erratic in his answers, not even bothering to match the type of animal—insect, bird, fish—to the clues in the illustration anymore.

It’s rhythmic. Meaningless. Soothing.

It’s utterly alien. The threats aren’t a motivation for self-improvement, the way Maul remembers them being, and Savage is just moving further and further away from any viable answers. It doesn’t make any sense: Maul had often loved his teacher and wished for His approval, and Savage does, too. Maul had wished to end his pain, and Savage is terrified. The situations are equivalent. _There should be no reason why punishment doesn’t work now._

Savage should be _learning_.

There is no difference between now and all those times when it worked for Lord Sidious. No difference but two.

Savage.

Maul.

Master and apprentice, but not. Brothers. The lesson of strangulation, of near-death and terror, of dipping into the dark side to ensure your survival if there is nothing else left but your body and the hand of your Master cutting off your air supply—that lesson, just days ago, had been aborted as well because of Maul’s weakness. His inability to teach the way Lord Sidious does. He’d been terrified at the idea of accidentally ending his brother’s life, of losing whatever this new life is, and he had _cried_. He’d allowed himself to be held. Maul had been too weak to teach in the old ways then, and he is still too weak now. _Will always be too weak._ He doesn’t want to hurt Savage.

This failure, in hindsight, is entirely predictable. He took an apprentice too early, left and chose to challenge his own Master years before he was ready, and now he cannot even instruct Savage in the aurebesh, let alone the dark side of the force. He’d had no choice in leaving, at first, because Savage had abducted him, but—he _chose_ to stay with Savage. Maul chose to make that mistake.

Naïveté and youth and the deep heavy knowledge that if Maul had returned to his Master, Savage would be dead now. It was the wrong choice, but it’s too late to go back now. It was wrong, but still, it feels…

He can hear Master laughing somewhere deep inside his mind _(Maul is no Master—)_ and it only makes him grateful that his brother is still holding down his ‘saber hand.

_Maul is no—_

Abruptly, Savage’s voice cuts through the revelation. “Brother. I’ve taught before, showed children how to walk, how to sew and make weapons and fight. I know how to do it. Teaching’s not that difficult, really, if you _care_.” Something flashes across his force presence, unflinching white hatred, and then it’s swallowed again by love and anxiety and regret. “If you feel it is important that I learn how to read, I can show you how.”

If his would-be Sith Master can’t even execute a simple lesson, he may as well try. Maul is tired. He nods.

“Let go of the lightsaber, brother.”

A slow shuddering breath, and then Maul obeys.

“It’s alright to ask me for help when you don’t know what you’re doing, brother.”

_This is—_

Savage keeps his warm right hand wrapped around Maul’s, but he pulls it up slightly, away from the weapon, and Maul acquiesces. With his other hand, Savage gently rolls away the saberstaff, and then he instructs, “Show me the shape of the letter. The first one. Aurek? Trace it on the floor.”

Maul does, hesitantly and then over and over, pulling Savage’s hand along. _This isn’t teaching,_ he thinks. It shouldn’t be this easy. _This is wrong_ , but he doesn’t let go, even when he feels the ghost of electricity lashing across his skin.

+

_(Maul misunderstood the point of lessons, in fact. Of punishment. Even though Lord Sidious wasn’t as invested in developing Maul’s mind himself and left the task to his servants, he wasn’t in the habit of ordering him to do something as flat-out impossible as naming animals that Maul had never seen. He wanted his weapon to progress, after all. Moreover, the desperation for approval was usually enough._

_He asked for things that could be accomplished, at least most of the time, unless he wanted to punish Maul._

_It’s just that the pain doesn’t feel any different.)_

+

“What do your datapads say of Wrath, brother?” Savage asks, later. The lights inside the cargo hold where they always sleep and where, mere hours ago, Maul almost _hurt_ … Where Maul received yet another proof of his own failure. The lights are shut off and dark, now, except for the one lamp that always flashes its comforting green through the open door.

Maul’s wrapped up and warm inside the blanket that Savage insists he use, and he’s almost asleep. Blearily and angry and still uncertain, he blinks open his eyes again, and finds Savage’s irises shining at him through the gloom. “What,” he grumbles.

“Wrath. The first nightbrother. What do they say?”

“Learn to read and look it up yourself.” Maul pulls the blanket over his head. Slowly, the air grows damp and hot and stale around him, and it’s a sufficient rejection to make the room blissfully quiet.

It’s enough, for almost a minute.

“They say nothing, don’t they.”

Savage is entirely correct. Maul had looked for information, years ago when he was small and his droid caretaker had revealed Maul’s birth species. When, for a few hours, he’d failed to understand that the answer as to what he was was _Sith_ , and that was sufficient. He’d read what little research there had been about the nightbrothers, but nothing had ever mentioned this ‘Wrath’ or anything else that Savage likes telling Maul about, not even the strange animals he spoke of today. (Nothing had ever mentioned that someone like Savage was waiting for Maul.)

“Nobody ever wrote about him,” Maul agrees. “I said that _everything important_ has been written down, I never talked about this ‘Wrath’. I do not care about your backwater myths. It’s night. Shut up.”

Blessed silence.

Five minutes later—

“Who was Wrath, brother?” Maul whispers. It’s not quite an apology for today and as close as he’ll ever manage. Entirely by accident, those are also the words that are always used, the child’s call for the Elder’s recital.

Maul doesn’t understand why there’s a hitch in his brother’s heartbeats. He’ll never find out, but still he falls asleep with the soft age-worn cadences of strength and worship and ownership, of terror, of a man and a witch and a child and the long journey to bring that child back home entering his ears for the first time— _for the thousandth time_ —for the first time he can remember.

Tonight, despite everything, he will not dream.

**Author's Note:**

> I thought of this scene when sl-walker asked me whether Savage can read and I have zero impulse control, and that's basically it. This obviously takes place shortly after Curses and wasn't planned, so there are still about four stories left in my plot outline
> 
> Title's from a [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzDwS3Q8XbQ) by Frank Turner _(and I can't say if I can change / the patterns that have caused you pain)_
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and also to everyone who's ever commented on this series! Without you Runaways would have been over after Princess!  
> 


End file.
